Bitcoin Forum

This is why I don't like to sell bitcoin.

I was contacted by a vasiliy dichovskiy with the email address mdunaway70@gmail.com requesting to purchase $500 worth of bitcoin and pay by Wells Fargo online transfer.  It took a few days for him to send and when he did he lowered the amount to $240. The name I received money from through Wells Fargo did not match the name on the email.  I googled the name and fortunately for me there's only 1 in the entire United States and doesn't fit the profile for a bitcoin user.  He's a pastor in the US with videos on youtube and a full profile on the church's website.  Gmail is good about quoting previous emails when replying and with these I noticed that the language settings were set to Russian.  The Google+ account also had a post selling CD keys for Guild Wars 2 (i think). More pieces that didn't fit the profile of this person.  

I questioned about the name difference and "vasiliy" explained that yes the email he was using wasn't his real email and the name was fake and that it was being used to contact a russian company about starting up a bitcoin business.  He said his name was in fact the name from the Wells Fargo account and he was using a fake name to protect himself from the Russians stealing their product and company.  He also said he is telling the russians that he was born there and has lived in the US for 5 years.  So pretty much everything this guy says is fake.

He sent me screenshots of the Wells Fargo account to try and prove that the account was his.  This really only buried him more.  There was a transaction to the church of the pastor that I had found online.  I sent him links to the youtube videos and to the church site asking if that was him and he said no he's not a pastor and that there are several people with his name in the US.  Even though he presented me evidence that he is using the pastor's account, he claims that the account doesn't belong to that man and that it is his.

The really frustrating part of all of this is that I can not cancel the online money transfer that was sent to me. Wells Fargo has no way of doing it.  The person that sent it has to do it.  Wells Fargo also doesn't care that I'm reporting someone elses account as being comprimised.  They've so far refused to take any action to contact the person directly to verify that it is legit.

Of course, now I am being accused of being a scammer(not publicly yet) because I haven't sent him any bitcoin and I haven't reversed the online transfer.  The money will just sit in my account while I wait for the real owner to reverse it and get it back.

I've contacted the church in hopes to get in contact with the pastor and get this all sorted.

I know it does no use to post an email and a name as they can easily be replaced. I post this for awareness for comprimised bank accounts and online transfers.  I suspect that the original owner wasn't registered for online transfers and so the hacker set up his own mobile to be the 2nd factor authorization source to send the online transfers.

 

Forgive my ignorance, but can Wells Fargo payments be reversed?  Are you worried that they will reverse the transaction after you send the bitcoins, or are you just being a good person here?

I've been told that they can be reversed, but not by the recipient.  Only the sender can do it however I haven't seen this happen yet. 

Yes, I am/was worried that if I sent the bitcoin that the amount would have later been reversed and I would have been out the $240 and yes I guess I am also being a good person by trying to get in contact with the actual owner of the account since Wells Fargo seems to refuse to do so.

Just updating that with the screenshots of the account he sent me, I was able to do an online transfer back to the account. I made attempts to contact the original owner with no luck.

Meanwhile, russian guy is supposedly reporting me to the ic3 (http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx). I don't bother giving him any further energy with his bullshit stories.

Imho you have handled this as well as is possible, I would be very supprised to see you get a scammer tag for this.